Page 292 of Shadowblood Souls
He pulls out a couple of metal bands about as thick as my thumb. “You’ll each be wearing one of these around an ankle. So you’ll never really be alone.”
Eight
Riva
The lit windows stand out on the face of the mansion like signal flares in the dark night. But we have to avoid those beacons until we’re inside.
Jacob topples the last of the three men who were stationed outside the isolated home with a snap of a vertebrae straight through the spinal cord. His power catches the body so it slumps quietly on the ground rather than hitting the lawn with a thump.
That’s what he’s spent the past two days practicing, while I’ve been climbing more walls, slipping silently through shadows… and doing my bestnotto kill mice.
Oh, and one of Clancy’s guardians did walk me through the fastest ways to kill a person with my claws using a dummy. But when she saw that my cage-fighting days had driven those skills home even deeper than my previous facility training, she decided I was good to go.
I always left my opponents alive if I could, but if it came down to me or them, I needed to know how to end the fight quick.
We stalk swiftly through the darkness to the back of the sprawling two-story mansion. Clancy showed us a rough blueprint of the place—there’s a room at the back that the people he’s sent to observe never saw the light go on in.
Whatever our targets do in there, they don’t do it at night. It’s our best chance at entering without alerting anyone.
The second-floor window is closed, and I bet it has a latch on the inside too. But Jacob simply stares at it, and after a moment the sliding pane eases upward with a faint rasp.
I don’t even wait for it to be fully raised. I leap at the side of the building, digging my claws in the way I’ve rehearsed, and fling myself up toward the window.
My ears pick up the tiny scratching of my claws, but I don’t think even Jacob will be able to hear the noise below, let alone anyone inside. The second I reach the window, I whip my arm over the ledge to brace myself and lift my other hand to carve open the screen.
I roll inside through the opening I’ve made, peer through the darkness to confirm that the small room holds nothing but scattered cardboard boxes, and whirl toward the window while unstrapping the coil of rope from my waist.
Jacob’s always been able to move small things very precisely and larger things with great force, but he doesn’t have enough control with something as heavy as a person to lift them fifteen feet in the air with no chance of them thumping against the wall. So he won’t be flying himself or anyone else through windows anytime soon.
Although when Clancy talked us through this part of the plan, I got the impression that Jake was making mental notes to develop that skill too.
I drop the rope, and Jacob catches hold. Bracing his feet against the bricks, he heaves himself up with careful steps until he can scramble in after me.
We glance around the room, our eyes adjusting to the more enclosed darkness. He reaches into a box and lifts up what at first looks like a rag.
No, it’s a shirt—a kid’s shirt, that could fit a six year old.
My stomach clenches.
Another box I glance into holds an assortment of basic toys—dolls and plastic cars and building blocks. My throat constricts to match my gut.
Clancy said the slavers don’t appear to bring the kids to this house, but they clearly stash some supplies to do with their business.
Jacob glances at me with a determined expression, and I nod, squaring my shoulders. I may have led the way into the house, but for most of the mission, he’s going first.
He’ll “dispatch” every person we see who’s part of the slaving ring, and I’ll stay ready to leap in if Jake’s subtler approach to offing them goes wrong.
Zian’s X-ray vision would have been helpful here too, though I guess he might not have even fit through the window. And Clancy is still determined not to let too many of our group work together.
As we steal over to the door, footsteps creak on the floor outside.
Jacob tenses. He cocks his head, judging the sound, and nudges the door open a sliver to get a look outside.
The next thing I know, there’s another faintcrack, and he’s yanking a limp corpse into the storage room with his powers.
I catch the body to help break its fall, and we lay it together on the floor. Even slack with death, the face catches on a memory.
It’s one of the men from the pictures Clancy showed us. Not the boss, though.
